Robison Wells - Blackout

“You ready?” Laura asked.

He didn’t answer. Of course he was ready.

She slowed as they approached. The lead car was marked as the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department. A portly man with a thick mustache walked around the front of the cruiser.

“You know what to do,” Alec whispered, suddenly nervous. Local authorities were always a wild card—he wasn’t sure how paranoid they would be, or how strictly they’d follow guidelines of police protocol. The only thing Alec needed was time, but he wouldn’t get that if the officer had a “shoot first, ask questions later” approach.

Laura stopped the car and shifted into park. She unrolled her window.

The officer clicked on his flashlight and began walking toward them, his hand resting on his holstered gun.

Alec wondered how alert Dan was in the back. That’s where the stolen rifle was, under a blanket, and Dan was probably still too weak to use it. Alec had the pistol under his own seat.

He tried to push all of those thoughts out of his mind. He focused on the officer.

“Where ya headin’?” the officer asked, peering in the windows. He shone his light in Laura’s face, then Alec’s, then at Dan.

“Home,” Laura said, her voice scared. “We were camping down in Kodachrome Basin, but we heard about the dam on the radio. We figured it was time to go.”

“License?”

Laura fumbled for it, digging in her jeans pockets first, and then leaning over to the glove compartment. She wasn’t really looking for it, Alec knew. She was wasting time.

The memory he was trying to place was a simple one—that the officer had heard the suspects had been spotted at roadblock in St. George—four hours to the west. It was the easiest kind of memory to plant. Just a simple fact. The officer could build the rest of the story in his own mind.

Laura turned to the window and handed the truck’s fake insurance card. “Here’s this. Still looking for the license. Sorry—we left in a rush and I’m not sure where I put everything.”

“Take your time,” the officer said.

Dammit. A second man was walking over from the cars. Alec could only work on one mind at once.

Laura’s eyes met Alec’s as she turned back to dig through the glove compartment again.

“Where’s home?” the officer asked.

“Denver,” she answered.

“That’s a long way to drive.”

“We were just trying to get away from everything,” she said, finally grabbing the license and handing it to the officer. “We left right after the stadium came down last week. Figured we’d go somewhere safe.”

Alec switched his focus to the second man, but he had to be more careful now. The memory had to be perfect—it had to match the first officer’s exactly.

It was quiet for several seconds as the men looked at the driver’s license of Laura Hansen, the all-American blonde from Lakewood, Colorado. It wasn’t even a forgery—she’d lived there for ten years with her sleeper-agent parents, groomed and prepared for this as all of them were. All Colorado natives, all graduates of Colorado public high schools.

Keep talking, Laura.

But she was quiet, the officers several feet away, back from the window so they could watch everyone.

Dan sat up in the backseat and stretched. Probably trying to show he wasn’t a threat, that he wasn’t attempting to hide anything.

Alec was pouring the information into the second man’s mind. Three suspects, all matching the description of the terrorists, were spotted at a roadblock just outside of St. George. Three suspects. The call came in on the radio. The sighting only happened half an hour ago.

What were the men doing back there? It wasn’t the first time that Alec wished he could read thoughts as well as influence them.

Were their minds resisting the new memories? The whole reason for the roadblock was probably to watch for suspects, so the notion that the suspects had been seen half an hour ago would be hard to reconcile in their minds. Why were they still stopping cars? Who were they still looking for?

The officer reappeared at the car window, his flashlight blocking Alec’s view of him.

He handed Laura’s license and insurance back to her. “The bad news is that you’re going to run into a lot of traffic a couple miles up the road. Everyone’s doing the same thing you are, coming up outta Bullfrog. How far are you fixin’ to drive tonight?”

“Until we get tired,” Laura said.

The officer stepped back and patted the hood of the truck. “Well, be safe. Stay awake.”

Laura stuffed the license and insurance back into the glove compartment, thanked the officer, and then steered the car through the roadblock.

“That was a close one,” Dan said.

“Easy,” Alec answered. “Have I ever failed you?”

“I could have taken them both,” Laura said.

Alec ignored that. It was her answer for everything, and it would leave a huge trail for police to follow.

He pulled out his smartphone again. “Dan, you want natural stone?”

Dan yawned. “You find something?”

Alec opened a picture and handed the phone back to Dan. “How’s that?”

“Where is it?”

“Maybe an hour and a half away. Depends on the traffic.”

Laura turned to look at him, the grin on her face illuminated by the glow of the phone. “Two in one day?”

Alec looked in the rearview mirror. “Better get some sleep, Dan.”

“IF ANYONE WAS THERE, WE’Dhave seen them by now,” Jack whispered.

Aubrey knew he was probably right, but he didn’t have as much to lose as she did. Jack wasn’t a freak. The army hadn’t shown up at the dance to take him.

As Aubrey and Jack waited in the tall, dry grass behind her trailer park, the disaster at the Gunderson Barn kept replaying in her mind. One thing was nagging at her.

A soldier had referred to Nate as a “possible Lambda.” What was a Lambda? She knew lambda was a letter in the Greek alphabet, she’d heard about it in physics—a lambda particle—and she’d seen lambda used in math before. But it wasn’t really what it meant that was nagging her; it was that it meant something . Whatever Nate was, he was a possible Lambda. The army knew about Lambdas. They knew about freaks.

Am I a Lambda?

The thought both scared and exhilarated her. Whatever made Aubrey invisible had a name. Someone was researching it. Maybe someone was looking for a cure.

Maybe. Or maybe they were looking for Lambdas to exterminate them.

“It’s been fifteen minutes,” Jack said, looking at his watch.

There were lights on in a few of the mobile homes, including hers, but nothing had moved. A car drove down the highway every minute or two, never slowing to glance at the run-down trailer park.

Cautiously, Aubrey stood and then squeezed through a break in the fence as she’d done a thousand times before. Jack hurried behind her and they slipped quietly down the dirt road to the second home on the right. It was filthy, more so than it used to be, now that Aubrey had a life other than helping her dad. She felt a twinge of embarrassment.

No, it’s just Jack. He’s been here almost every day since we were little.

The door was unlocked, as usual, and Aubrey stepped inside. Jack followed her.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Her father’s voice was slurred and loud, breaking through the small amount of calm they’d felt out in the darkness. He stood in the kitchen, fiddling with a can of something.

Aubrey stepped to her father and gave him a hug. “Just here to change clothes, Daddy.”

“What happened to your dress?” he nearly shouted. He had about ten days’ worth of unshaven beard, and his long gray hair was out of place as if he’d been sleeping.